"Undertow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some sort at the door of Congress that the head of the government, harassed by overwork, distracted by diverse trifles—each one too vital to entrust to feeble subordinates; buffeted by the gathering surge without and dragged down by the angry undertow within, lost his influence, and with ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... before us like a sort of portable midnight; I now throw it away upon the reader, as it were; it never would come in anywhere. I stayed all night at Long Branch, and I had a bath the next morning before breakfast: an extremely cold one, with a life-line to keep me against the undertow. In this rite I had the company of a young New- Yorker, whom I had met on the boat coming down, and who was of the light, hopeful, adventurous business type which seems peculiar to the city, and which ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... hammered by the billows, the wreck drifted, rising and falling, starting and wallowing toward the awful line where the breakers plunged over the undertow and dashed themselves to death on the resounding shore. There was a wide debatable ground between land and water. One moment it belonged to earth, the next lofty curling surges foamed howling over it; then the undertow was flying back in savage torrents. Would the hawser reach across this ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... the undertow tugging at my limbs, and barely able to retain my footing, intent upon my purpose. Full strength had come back to my muscles, and my head was again clear. The imminent sense of danger seemed to bring me a feeling of happiness, of new confidence in myself. The die was cast, and whatever the result, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... of Lake Tahoe, Lakeside Park possesses a fine stretch of beautiful, clean, sandy beach. There are no rocks, deep holes, tide or undertow. Children can wade, bathe or swim in perfect safety as the shore gradually slopes into ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... unique; and his life may serve for all time as an incentive to aspiring souls who would fight the battles and win the love of mankind. The average American of to-day who sees, when his attention is called to it, and deplores, if he be a thoughtful and just man, the deep undertow of race prejudice that retards the progress of the colored people of our own generation, cannot, except by reading the painful records of the past, conceive of the mental and spiritual darkness to which slavery, as the inexorable ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... compliment went straight to my head. It was seeking the point of least resistance, I suppose. I branched out and undertook to discuss art matters with him on a more familiar basis. It was a mistake; but before I realized that it was a mistake I was out in the undertow sixty yards from shore, going down for the third time, with a low gurgling cry. He did not put out to save me, either; he left me to sink in the heaving and abysmal sea of my own fathomless ignorance. He just stood there and let me drown. It was a cruel thing, for which ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... due from the City until about six, and so she went and played Badminton with the Widgett girls until dinner-time. The atmosphere at dinner was not propitious. Her aunt was blandly amiable above a certain tremulous undertow, and talked as if to a caller about the alarming spread of marigolds that summer at the end of the garden, a sort of Yellow Peril to all the smaller hardy annuals, while her father brought some papers to table and presented himself as preoccupied with them. "It really seems as if ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... nearly drowned them, dragged their vessel ashore, with all its load. He then went to the rescue of Hennepin, who, with his awkward companion, was in woful need of succor. Father Gabriel, with his sixty-four years, was no match for the surf and the violent undertow. Hennepin, finding himself safe, waded to his relief, and carried him ashore on his sturdy shoulders; while the old friar, though drenched to the skin, laughed gayly under his cowl, as his brother missionary staggered with him up the beach. [Footnote: ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... bank. It was an awful, terrible scene, to witness so many at one moment tossed and dashed about by the waves—so many fellow-beings threatened with eternity. At one moment they were close to the beach, forced on to it by some tremendous wave; at the next, the receding water and the undertow swept them all back; and of the many who had been swimming one half had disappeared to rise no more. Francisco watched with agony as he perceived that the number decreased, and that none had yet gained the shore. At last he snatched up the haulyards of his boat's ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... Then the brute turned, heading up the pool with the speed of a hooked salmon, and Otter, who had prayed that the line would break, now prayed that it might hold, for he knew that even he could never hope to swim against that undertow. ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard |
